Novice Chases

[apracing]

A topic frequently discussed in terms of small fields and uncompetitive races. But the Race Planning dept have come up with an answer – this may have been announced somewhere, but if it was, I missed it and I haven’t been able to find a press release or announcement in the usual places.

But with the recent publication of the full racing program up to Aug 31st, I can tell you that there are no non handicap novice chases at all, that’s none, zero, nil, between May 1st and Sept 1st. That also means no Beginners Chases either. They’ve been replaced by novice handicap chases, which fall into three categories, 0-100, 0-120 and 0 – anything. The latter being open to any horse with an official handicap rating.

To give an example, on May 1st, Warwick will stage a 2M novice handicap worth £15,000 with no maximum rating limit and a 20lb weight range. If he so chose, Mr Henderson could run Constitution Hill in that race. Go on Mr Buckley, it’s a penalty kick (with no goalkeeper) and if they raise his mark for winning, so what!

But it’s not so good for the owner of a horse that has achieved a mark of 125 over hurdles and was planning a run in a novice chase before being given a break. His only option is one of these open ended novice handicaps, where any runner rated 146+ will put him out of the handicap. And that’s not a theoretical problem, it’s how I noticed the change, while checking the program on behalf of the owner of just such a horse.

Presumably this is yet another shifting of the deckchairs in an attempt to increase field sizes – which won’t work because it’s the number of qualified horses that’s the problem, not the type of races provided for them.

[Author]

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